Leveraging Device-Based Physical Activity Assessment to Prepare Children and Young People for a Digital Health Future: A Call for a Rights-Based Approach

In this commentary, we apply a children’s rights lens to explore some of the key challenges and opportunities offered by device-based physical activity assessment with children and young people (CYP). We focus specifically on the development of the necessary skills that will enable CYP to benefit from device-based physical activity data. In doing so, we encourage the research community to consider how to utilize their research endeavors to help prepare CYP for a digital health future.

Over the past decade, technology has evolved at pace which has enabled a proliferation of digital devices used to assess physical activity in diverse populations, including in CYP.1 As a result, CYP will increasingly have opportunities to engage with their personal physical activity data not only via their own digital devices but also through school-based physical activity monitoring (eg, in class as a teaching tool)2 via population surveillance3,4 or via physical activity interventions in schools and other settings.5 These developments present a wealth of opportunities to expand understanding of physical activity behaviors and for designing (digital) physical activity promotion interventions. However, from a children’s rights perspective, these advancements also present challenges. Whereas the digital health industry is regarded as giving minimal attention to how children’s rights are impacted by this increasingly prolific exposure to digital health technologies,6 we present an argument for the research community to be proactive in addressing these issues.